Travel

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Fresh Dish is another "meal delivery service", but it's a bit different. Instead of sending you prepared meals, they send you meal kits that you can cook/prepare in 30 minutes. They run from $8-12 per person ($32 for a meal for 4 or $24 for 2) and they've included everything in the kit, from the big ingredients to small packets of salt and pepper.

The meats and vegetables are raw, and most things are already pre-measured in their own containers.

The fajita was super easy to make. Just season the meat with salt and pepper and cook on both sides. The tortillas just needed some heating up and then all the toppings like guacamole and salsa were already prepared. The most labor I had to do was probably slicing the steak up.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

On my second trip to Portland, a food cart visit was a must, and why not try what is perhaps the most famous of them all: Hainanese chicken and rice at Nong's Khao Man Gai ($6.75)

The order I shared with e*starLA was breast meat. It was tender, but not incredibly special. Instead, the garlicky sauce is really what it's all about! Douse the meat and rice with plenty of it (extra sauce goes for $1).

I don't normally like chicken breast that much, though, and I should've been wiser and ordered like Eat Recklessly did. She asked for dark meat and said yes to the crispy skin! Her plate was 10x better than mine was. I am definitely asking for dark meat and getting the skin next time around.

Monday, January 28, 2013

One of my pet peeves is when I sit down at a bar for the first time and the bartender asks what they can get for me without giving me the menu. "Uh, the menu, please" is typically my response. This one takes it a bit further. As he handed me the menu, he says that they have specialty cocktails but they can make me whatever I wanted, like Jack n Coke ... Right. Either he thinks I'm a Jack kind of girl or that's all he knows how to make, but either way it did not seem promising.

I had chosen The Roof on Wilshire for New Year's Day brunch partly because I remembered reading good things about their hot cocktail menu. Granted, Caroline's review was from winter the year before, but I was hoping maybe they'd kept at least some of them - or the quality - for a year. I didn't see any hot drinks listed, though, so I asked the bartender. Apparently the page with the hot drinks list was missing from the menu I had, so he said he'd get me one. Ten minutes later he asked what I wanted to order. "Um, the hot drinks list?"
"Oh, yeah!"

This happened two more times. Luckily I had plenty of time waiting for my party of ten friends who are always late.

Finally, I got the "hot drinks list" which only consisted of a hot toddy and some kahlua whipped cream concoction. That was what I waited 20 minutes to read? Huh. I finally settled on a jalapeno-mezcal cocktail. Not bad, quite spicy.

Finally my table is ready and my friends arrived. The New Year's brunch deal here was a "3-course" meal for around $25 if I remember correctly.
The first course listed some bread and pastry selection, but as I tried placing an order for a croissant, they said they're just bringing a "bread basket" to the table. The "basket" turned out to be this plate. Not bad, but ... the same plate that they brought for the 10 of us they brought to tables of 4. There's also only one croissant and one bacon cheddar biscuit. Which meant I didn't get any. I asked them for more croissant about half a dozen times, which were always answered with "I'll bring them right out" but never appeared.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Suzanne Goin is one of the most established chefs in Los Angeles with the long-standing Lucques and AOC and the newer Tavern and The Hungry Cat, so it should come as no surprise that Lucques Catering was chosen to cater the Screen Actors Guild Awards for the 4th year in a row.

The 19th SAG Awards will take place on Sunday, January 27 at the Shrine Exposition Center. Goin will prepare three dishes on the same plate composed of: Roasted beets and blood oranges with feta and black olives, Slow-roasted salmon with green rice, labneh, capers and nasturtiums, and Beef tenderloin with fingerlings, arugula, and horseradish cream.

The vegan option has the feta removed from the beet salad and the other two dishes replaced by Cauliflower couscous with pomegranate salsa and Farro with kale, young broccoli, currants and pine nuts.

The food will be served with Champagne Taittinger and wines from Gallo.

The slow-roasted salmon was my favorite of all the dishes, with incredible texture and that amazing green rice, so I am sharing her recipe here!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Much like Chinese food, even though Thai food is popular and prevalent in the US, most people don't venture out of the usual order of tom yum, pad thai, etc (though LA residents are pretty good about venturing out). Granted, it's hard to do when faced with a menu of foreign words. That's why for me, having a tasting menu at a recent media dinner at Ayara Thai Cuisine was a good way to explore.

The first bite was something I haven't had before. It's called Miang Kham. The name literally means "one bite" and it's described as "6 flavors" wrapped in young Chinese broccoli leaves and eaten whole.

This is one of the royal dishes of Thailand and is rare to find here in the US. It's usually served on betel nut leaves and composed of shallots, onions, lime, peanut, chili, tamarind sauce. It's at once sweet, spicy, and bitter.

A typical Bangkok street food is Moo Ping (marinated pork skewers) & Sticky Rice. We had them with both the Tigers Cry sauce and roasted chili sauce.

The roasted chili sauce was quite spicy and the sticky rice really helped!

Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Pasadena PinotFest Grand Tasting returns on Saturday, February 9 to the Altadena Country Club (preceded by a kickoff tasting and kickoff dinner at Noir the weeks before). The event runs from 1-4:30PM with over 200 pinot noir wines, food, and live jazz. Tickets are $89 for general admission and $119 for VIP tasting (starts at 11AM), with portions of the proceeds benefiting Hathaway Sycamores Child & Family Services.

Last year's tasting featured a lot of wineries from nearby Santa Barbara County like Hitching Post, Brewer-Clifton, La Fenetre Winery and many more.

The Altadena Country Club is a beautiful space for the wine tasting, with wonderful views, although the tasting room can get pretty crowded as the event goes on.

Joshua Klapper from La Fenetre Winery

I found a couple of new wines (new to me) that I enjoyed, including Sojourn from Sonoma Coast, who provided a great vertical tasting. There will be quite a few vertical tastings at the grand tasting, which is really the best way to taste what a winery has to offer.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The owner of Dan Tana has branched out of the old school Italian with Doma, a modern Mediterranean Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. It's a casual but elegant space with a focus on seafood. The chef, Dustin Trani, grew up working in his family seafood restaurant, J. Trani's in San Pedro. He has also trained in Europe and worked in Thailand, and he brings these influences into his menu.

I got to the restaurant too early for my media dinner, so I sat at the bar and chatted with the bartender. The cocktail menu during the opening was simple, but he said that they will soon be expanding the menu to include more complex drinks including a barrel aged Negroski (Cynar, Campari, basil infused vodka).

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He let me take a peek at the upcoming menu, which was definitely a lot more interesting than the opening menu. I ordered the Mexican Grill which was mezcal, Chartreuse, and peppers. Spicy and smoky!

After everyone else arrived, we sat down for an extensive tasting that started with some fresh Japanese hamachi sashimi, ginger soy, ponzu caviar, carrot, cucumber, scallion, sesame tuile ($18, the portion shown is for a tasting, probably not the full portion)

The ponzu "caviar" is a fun touch here

I won't show you everything I ate that night, but here are some of the many many highlights:

Monday, January 7, 2013

I was recently involved with a project to review a few Korean restaurants in Los Angeles, and one of my assignment was Palsaik Samgyupsal Korean BBQ. I was pretty excited since I had never been to this restaurant which boasts eight flavors of pork belly. The set menu with the 8 pork belly and stew ("Palsaik Set Menu") was $49.95. I asked around as to how many people the set would feed and got answers ranging from "two, but when you get to the rice you won't be able to taste anything" to four, so I settled at three, which seems to have been the perfect number.

Compared to other Korean BBQ places, Palsaik is decidedly more modern looking and cleaner (though the service wasn't any better)

The presentation was also quite impressive. A long wooden board held eight plates of the pork and underneath each one the flavor was printed: Wine, Original, Ginseng, Garlic, Herb, Curry, Miso Paste, and Red Pepper Paste.

On the wall they also display the "health benefits" of each flavor, which I thought was pretty funny ... I mean, we're eating eight slices of fatty pork belly here! I don't think the "benefits" of the red wine marinade would really cancel out the effects on your blood vessels.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

DRY Soda is a Seattle based company that produces colorless sodas with less sugar and great flavors like lavender, rhubarb, blood orange, and the like. While originally they were made to be drank straight from the bottle, they soon realized that bartenders like to use them as mixers, and they jumped on the opportunity.

The DRY Soda Co. owner then traveled to Los Angeles and held a cocktail pairing dinner at Sadie in Hollywood, where the main barman Giovanni Martinez created four cocktails made with DRY Soda.

Our second drink was the aromatic Lavande, made with scotch, honey, lemon, Lavender DRY soda, light absinthe spray. This was my second favorite cocktail of the night. The lavender soda works well and did not become overpowered with the strong scotch and absinthe components.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Tripel is perhaps my favorite style of ales, so when I had my choice of beer making workshops at the Wurstkuche in Venice during LA Beer Week, the choice was easy. They don't regularly do this but they had set up their small outdoor area in the back for the events.

The workshop also consisted of tasting a few Tripels (because why would you make beer while sober, right??)

We started off with the Westmalle Tripel, which was also the recipe we based one of our own brew of.

The Westmalle originally started in the 30s, and the monks took it over in the 50s. Westmalle is a classic, the original Tripel, so to speak. The number "dubbel" or "triple" refers to the number of fermentations the ales go through.

So, back to the homebrewing course. The first step is to steep the barley.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Happy New Year everyone! 'Tis time for me to try and catch up on so many old posts, including ones from Portland Cocktail Week.

My favorite part of Portland Cocktail Week was the Cognac double decker bus tour, where a bright red double decker picked us up at the hotel and took us to three bars to sip cognac cocktails and had some great bites to eat.

Our first stop was Imperial, one of Chef Vitaly Paley's new restaurant with Brandon Wise as the bar manager.

We had Vieux Carre on tap and tasted an amazing hickory infused vermouth which really showed off the bar's strength.

Friday, December 28, 2012

My favorite meal in 2012? Easy. Willows Inn at Lummi Island is a small inn on a small island in Washington, with a restaurant helmed by Chef Blaine Wetzel, a young native of the area who had worked at Noma (you know, the world's best restaurant). When they talk about local ingredients, they really mean it. It isn't just produce from the state, but really local. Chef Wetzel forages around the island. A lot of the fish used are caught in the waters around the island, just five minutes from the restaurant.

Willows Inn is a 2-hour drive from Seattle plus a 10 minute ferry ride, and it's not only worth it but the journey adds to the experience.

There's only one seating every night which is at 6:30. The ferry only runs every hour and we didn't want to be late, so we took the 5PM ferry and ended up with time on our hands when we got to Willows Inn. Time to sit on the patio staring into the sunset while sipping cocktails. The cocktails here had quite a few interesting ingredients. I loved the Pacific Gin Fizz (gin, wild pineapple weed, egg white - $14)

What is wild pineapple weed, you ask? I didn't know it then but apparently it's wild chamomile. Whatever it was, it was my favorite out of the cocktails we tried. We also had time to peek into the kitchen as they were prepping.

Finally we got called and seated in the small dining room.

The dinner is "five courses" with a lot of "snacks", which meant way more food than five courses. Our meal started with a small wooden box.

As you open the treasure box: a whiff of smoke, and baked sunflower root

Next is a Crispy crepe with salmon roe, sandwiched between green onions. The crepe was a thin crisped salmon that held everything in a perfect bite-sized morsel.

Pickled oyster with sorrel was beautifully presented on a bowl of rocks